Everything about Le Cordon Bleu totally explained
Le Cordon Bleu (
French for "
blue ribbon") is generally recognised as the world's largest hospitality education institution, teaching hospitality management and the culinary arts.
Overview
The origin of the school comes from
L'Ordre des Chevaliers du Saint Esprit, an elite group of French
knights that was created in 1578. Each member was awarded the
Cross of the Holy Spirit, which hung from a blue ribbon. According to one story, the group became known for their extravagant and luxurious banquets, known as "cordon bleu." While these dinners ended with the
French Revolution, the name remained synonymous with excellent cooking. Another theory has it simply that the
blue ribbon became synonymous with excellence, and this was later applied to other fields such as cooking.
The name was adopted by the French culinary magazine,
La Cuisinière Cordon Bleu, founded by
Marthe Distel in the early 19th century. The magazine began offering special lessons by some of the best chefs in France. This eventually grew to become a cooking school that opened in
Paris in 1895 and quickly became one of the most elite cooking schools in the world.
In 1933, former student
Dione Lucas helped to open a school under the Le Cordon Bleu name in
London, England. In 1988, shortly after buying Le Cordon Bleu, president André J. Cointreau purchased the London school, and has since launched schools in
Adelaide and
Sydney,
Australia;
Seoul,
South Korea;
Ottawa,
Canada;
Tokyo,
Kobe &
Yokohama,
Japan;
Lima,
Peru; and
Bangkok,
Thailand. Le Cordon Bleu is due to open a new school in
Martinborough,
New Zealand in early 2009. In total, over 18,000 students attend a Cordon Bleu school each year. Le Cordon Bleu has also expanded, issuing
cookbooks and a line of
kitchenware.
It also operates 14 cities under the Le Cordon Bleu name in the
United States through a relationship with
Career Education Corporation. As a company, CEC has come under scrutiny in its role as an on-campus for-profit business, and some students have complained that under the CEC ownership, the potential income in the culinary industry wasn't fully disclosed to some of its U.S. Le Cordon Bleu students.
Apart from the culinary programs, Le Cordon Bleu also offers hospitality management education with up to 2000 students studying Bachelor or Masters degrees. They have Masters degrees in France, Japan, Korea and Australia and an on-line
gastronomy program. Their Bachelor programs in Hotel Management and Restaurant Management programs are delivered in the U.S., Mexico, Australia, and Korea.
While each Cordon Bleu school offers its own list of culinary short courses, matching local demand, the "Classic Cycle" is common to all. This consists of six ten-week courses: three in "
cuisine" and three in "
patisserie" (pastry making). Each course, if successfully completed, leads to the award of a certificate at basic, intermediate, or advanced level. Students who complete all three levels in the same field are awarded the
Diplôme de Cuisine or the
Diplôme de Pâtisserie. Those who complete all six courses are awarded the
Grand Diplôme. The "Grand Diplome" is one of the few culinary credentials that signifies mastery of both pastry and culinary fundamentals.
In her memoir
My Life in France (Knopf),
Julia Child, aided by her husband's nephew
Alex Prud'homme, discusses her experiences attending the school in the late 1940s. In 2007, an American writer,
Kathleen Flinn, wrote the first insider's account of attending the modern Paris flagship school titled
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry (Viking/Penguin). The tale recounts the modern day-to-day trials of the program, and provides a further history of the school.
It is often assumed that the character
Audrey Hepburn played in the 1954 film
Sabrina attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, however the school's name is never mentioned in the film. She did visit the school for the film's launch.
Notable alumni
Conflict with Manitoba restaurant
In 2006, Cordon Bleu threatened legal action against a small family owned restaurant in
Ste. Anne, Manitoba for breach of copyright. Although the restaurant had been operating under the name "Cordon Bleu" since 1963, and the owners asserted that no one could have mistakenly believed any connection between their "little hick restaurant" with the corporate giant, they felt that taking the issue to court would have bankrupted them. As a result, the Ste. Anne owners agreed to change their name and reached an undisclosed settlement with the larger company to pay for new signage and other costs.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Le Cordon Bleu'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://le_cordon_bleu.totallyexplained.com">Le Cordon Bleu Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
